Conference Agenda

Education policy change is not only central to explaining educational outcomes; it has increasingly become an object of analysis in its own right. A growing body of research asks what drives policy change and through which mechanisms it unfolds. Do reforms primarily respond to external pressures and crises, or are they better explained by endogenous dynamics within education systems? How does policy change operate in multi-level governance settings, where authority and responsibility are dispersed across actors and scales? How do policy instruments evolve over time? To what extent do processes of policy diffusion and emulation shape national policy trajectories, and how do these dynamics interact with patterns of policy diversity and convergence? This research agenda, and the comparative approaches associated with it, have been significantly advanced by the growing availability and granularity of cross-national data. Recent efforts to compile panel datasets on education policy have enabled longitudinal analyses of reform processes, significantly extending the scope of comparative historical inquiry in education.

A first major development in this direction was the emergence of global datasets routinely produced by international organizations, which substantially expanded cross-national coverage and increased data granularity. However, the analytical scope of such datasets has remained limited. They have largely focused on the “quantity” of education—through indicators capturing enrollment, expenditure, and provision—and, to a lesser extent, on the institutional and policy dimensions of education systems. When policy variables are included, coverage is often limited to a small number of countries and to the national level—thereby overlooking federal or highly decentralised education systems—and is frequently discontinuous over time, as is the case with several international large-scale assessment datasets.

This situation has begun to change only recently, with new efforts to compile panel data on the policy features of education systems. Ad hoc datasets carefully curated by specialised research teams (e.g. WERD, SchoolPol, WeSis, V-INDOC) have paved the way for a genuinely longitudinal perspective on education policy change, thereby expanding the horizons of comparative education analysis. These databases systematise information on a wide array of policy instruments and on the evolving configuration of education systems over time. In doing so, they help overcome some of the longstanding limitations of comparative research by enabling configurational analyses and richer accounts of policy change informed by policy sociology, policy process theories, and policy trajectory perspectives. Rather than framing policy change as a series of discrete “educational reform” episodes, these data infrastructures make it possible to trace the cumulative and path-dependent evolution of policy instruments, illuminating processes of expansion, recalibration, and accumulation.

This symposium brings together several papers that exemplify this new generation of comparative education policy research. The contributions draw on ongoing projects that examine both the determinants and the consequences of changes in the organization and governance of education systems across diverse institutional contexts. Collectively, they analyse the diversification of education policies in decentralised governance settings, the expansion of policy toolkits, and the intensification of reform efforts in key areas of education governance. Rather than treating reforms as discrete events, the contributions trace policy trajectories over time, taking the temporal dimension seriously to examine both the determinants and the consequences of changes in the organisation and governance of education systems. Beyond its empirical contributions, the symposium is conceived as a space for reflection and exchange on the analytical potential—and limits—of longitudinal approaches to the study of education policy and politics. In particular, it critically interrogates what this strand of research may inadvertently reify, overlook, or obscure. Panelists will also discuss strategies to address these limitations, including combining longitudinal, mid- and large-N analyses with qualitative approaches such as process tracing and small-N case studies.

Reform and policy change are multidimensional constructs. In principle, governments can induce change through multiple “tools”: (i) legislative action (new laws, amendments, decrees), (ii) budgetary incentives, (iii) information and persuasion campaigns, and (iv) contractual arrangements with state and non-state actors tied to public mandates (Hood, 1983). Since the early 2000s, a fifth tool has become central in many sectors: standards-based regulation through performance evaluation and benchmarking. In education, this includes accreditation, accountability, and quality assurance regimes in which states or authorized intermediaries set standards and assess provider performance. While each tool seems straightforward to observe over time, unidimensional measures often fail to capture the policy mixes (“reform packages”) that unfold across several years, as well as differences in bindingness, coverage, and sequencing. These challenges intensify in diffusion research. Studies of “traveling reforms” commonly reconstruct adoption sequences across countries - either by tracking outcome indicators (e.g., administrative downsizing patterns) or by mapping the spread of international organizations’ “global scripts” using program information. Yet diffusion research frequently narrows reform operationalization to single tools, often measured by whole counts, without being sensitive to variation in reform mixes. This focus can misrepresent reform dynamics in at least five ways: it atomizes bundled reforms into isolated acts; it privileges adoption over durability and reversal (“stickiness” and lifespan); it inflates apparent “reform peaks” by coding a single adoption year while ignoring subsequent, less binding instruments; it misses jurisdictional shifts when reforms move to subnational arenas (as in decentralization waves); and it overlooks national policy styles, where politicization, direct-democratic constraints, or consensus requirements make legislation a last resort, with change pursued via guidelines, pilots, or negotiated instruments. The presentation addresses this measurement problem through an empirical case study of education reform in China. Drawing on publicly available laws and policy repositories, it compiles and codes reform events across jurisdictional levels where possible. Events are tracked over time and summarized through three indicators: intensity (amount and significance of change), coverage (scope of change), and durability (how long measures remain in force). These metrics reveal system dynamics, identify reform bundles versus isolated acts, and distinguish shifts in the mix of “hard” and “soft” instruments. The resulting timelines and profiles provide a clear, comparable foundation for cross-system analyses of reform and diffusion beyond legislation alone.

Hood, C. (1983). Using bureaucracy sparingly. Public Administration, 61(2), 197-208.

A long-standing body of literature in education and welfare policy argues that parties and governments approach public policy reform with distinctive ideologies (Ansell, 2010; Apple, 2006; Ball, 2008; Esping-Andersen, 1990; Wiborg, 2009). Accordingly, parties’ reform preferences stem directly from these ideologies, resulting, for example, in distinctive 'social democratic' or 'conservative' approaches to education reform (e.g., Lawton, 1994). However, post-WWII education reform in Western democracies is rife with examples of governments with similar ideological goals implementing different reforms, including in areas relating to core values such as equality, such as educational tracking. This paper aims to theorise government stances on tracking reform, drawing on new data collected for the ERC-Schoolpol project which documents both long-term institutional change and actor coalitions. Our institutional index systematically codes changes in the degree of differentiation and hierarchy in lower-secondary tracking across seventeen Western democracies from 1945 to 2022 (Gingrich et al., 2024). In this paper, we combine this index with actor-coalitions data that systematically codes stances of these countries’ main left- and right-wing parties on education reform, including tracking, as well as institutional links between these parties and relevant stakeholders (churches, private education providers, and unions) over the same period. We also draw on country- and reform-specific literature as well as sources documenting decision-making processes (e.g., reports, parliamentary debates, the media), to reconstruct major reform-processes in each country. We analyse this data in two ways: quantitatively, using a medium-N analysis to assess the correlation between party types and reform timing and outcome; and qualitatively, by tracing the process that links reform conditions and outcomes in selected pathway cases (Gerring, 2007). We show that parties approach education with broad ideological aims but substantial uncertainty over particular reforms. In the short-term, this uncertainty is mediated through their links to stakeholders, who are certain about concrete reform consequences on status and working conditions. We also find that short-term reform preferences have long-term impacts, as parties align ideological aims with reform preferences based on these alignments, yielding varied reform paths. Our analysis shows that stakeholders can shape policy in ways other than blocking (Moe & Wiborg, 2017; Wiborg, 2017). The alignment between parties and stakeholders also influences how parties develop their approach to education reform. Therefore, analysing these alignments sheds light on both a key determinant of education policy change and the short- and long-term mechanisms that shape it.

Ansell, B. (2010). From the Ballot to the Blackboard. The Redistributive Political Economy of Education. Cambridge University Press. Apple, M. W. (2006). Educating the ‘right’ Way: Markets, Standards, God, and Inequality (2nd edn). Falmer Press. Ball, S. (2008). The Education Debate. Policy Press. Esping-Andersen, G. (1990). The three worlds of welfare capitalism. Polity Press. Gerring, J. (2007). Case Study Research. Principles and Practices. Cambridge University Press. Gingrich, J., Giudici, A., & McArthur, D. (2024). Multidimensionality matters: The implications of educational hierarchy and differentiation for intergenerational mobility in Europe. Comparative Education Review, 68(2), 238–261. Lawton, D. (1994). The Tory Mind on Education 1979–94. Routledge. Moe, T. M., & Wiborg, S. (Eds). (2017). The Comparative Politics of Education. Teacher Unions and Education Systems around the World. Cambridge University Press. Wiborg, S. (2009). Education and Social Integration. Palgrave Macmillan. Wiborg, S. (2017). The politics of blocking equality reforms in education: A study of organised interests in England, 1965-2010. Forum, 59(3), 395–412.

Policy debates about educational assessment are frequently shaped by tensions between assessment’s different purposes (Hughson et al., forthcoming), alongside normative questions such as whether assessment should reward ‘effort’ or ‘attainment’; whether reliability or validity should be prioritised; and whether exams are conducive to, or detrimental to young people’s mental well-being (Menzies et al., 2023; Millard et al., 2017). Cross-national studies have linked the expansion of standardised assessment to datafication (Jarke & Breiter, 2019) and New Public Management (Barbana et al., 2020), often highlighting the legitimising role of global surveys, the transnational institutions that run them and the ‘league tables’ they generate (Grek, 2009; Ozga, 2020). Country-specific studies have also shown how global influences and national context combine to shape reforms (Savage, 2020). More recently, scholars have documented retreats from testing, often linking these to parent and teacher advocacy groups or coalitions (Martinez et al., 2022). However, comparatively less attention has been paid to the process through which assessment reforms are formulated, contested, sustained or abandoned. This paper responds to this gap through a comparative analysis of assessment reforms in Singapore, New Zealand and South Australia. The study deploys a diverse case selection (Seawright & Gerring, 2008) centred on regime type, governance level, and cultural heritage, while remaining anchored in a common policy domain, region, performance profile, level of economic development, and main language. The analysis draws on extensive elite interviews in each jurisdiction (Berry, 2002; Lilleker, 2003; Menzies, 2025), triangulated with documentary evidence, including ministerial speeches and parliamentary debates. Cross-case comparison is guided by three theoretically informed expectations, rooted in discursive institutionalism (DI) which conceptualises policy change as emerging from the interaction between ideas, discourse, and institutional context (Schmidt, 2015). While, DI has been extensively theorised, it has been applied unevenly across policy domains and national contexts (Ćwiklicki & Mirzyńska, 2025). Through a structured comparison, we show that in Singapore, bounded contestation within a closed polity, underpinned by a stable meaning-context, led to iterative reform. In New Zealand’s more open polity, extensive contestation of normative and cognitive ideas led to divergence between government and public discourse. Combined with electoral instability, this contributed to reform breakdown. In South Australia, discourse was underpinned by a shared meaning-context and reflected widespread consensus over normative and cognitive ideas. The paper concludes by highlighting DI’s potential to guide comparative analysis of education policy trajectories in contrasting institutional contexts, proposing three tentative hypotheses for future research.

Barbana, S., Dumay, X., & Dupriez, V. (2020). Accountability policy forms in European education systems: An introduction. EERJ, 19(2), 87–93. Grek, S. (2009). Governing by numbers: The PISA ‘effect’ in Europe. JEP, 24(1), 23–37. Hughson, T., et al. (2026). Secondary School Assessment Systems Around the World: Summary . Jarke, J., & Breiter, A. (2019). The datafication of education. Learning, Media and Technology, 44(1), 1–6. Lilleker, D. G. (2003). Interviewing the political elite: Navigating a potential minefield. Politics, 23(3), 207–214. Martinez, J. C., Falabella, A., Holloway, J., & Santori, D. (2022). Anti-standardization and testing opt-out movements in education: Resistance, disputes and transformation. EPAA, 30(132). Menzies, L., Yates, W., & Huband-Thompson, B. (2023). Balancing Act: Navigating the Tensions in our School System. Ozga, J. (2020). Elites and expertise: The changing material production of knowledge for policy. Handbook of Education Policy Studies, V1, 53–69. Savage, G. C. (2020). The quest for revolution in Australian schooling policy. Routledge. Schmidt, V. (2015). Discursive institutionalism: Understanding policy in context. In Handbook of critical policy studies (pp. 171–189). Edward Elgar Publishing. Seawright, J., & Gerring, J. (2008). Case selection techniques in case study research: A menu of qualitative and quantitative options. Political Research Quarterly, 61(2), 294–308.

This paper draws on an ongoing comparative research project that examines twenty-five years of educational reform across advanced democracies, with a particular focus on quality-assurance policies and their cumulative effects. Building on debates within comparative education policy, the project analyzes how globalized models of educational governance—especially those centered on accountability, teacher standards, performance evaluation, and data-driven decision-making—circulate, become institutionalized, and intensify within national systems. While comparative education scholarship has demonstrated the convergence of policy instruments and priorities worldwide, less attention has been paid to how these instruments evolve, layer onto existing arrangements, and give rise to increasingly dense regulatory environments. Our research aims to address this gap by tracing reform trajectories longitudinally and examining how shared scripts take shape within diverse policy architectures. The project systematically maps major reforms in three interconnected dimensions—curriculum, assessment, and teachers—to identify the drivers, narratives, and political-economic dynamics shaping educational reforms across different jurisdictions. Methodologically, it combines structured policy coding across 49 PISA-participating countries with mixed-methods analysis. We build a longitudinal database using standardized indicators of policy adoption, design features, and institutional location, which then enables both configurational analysis across the full sample and, subsequently, process-tracing case studies in a smaller number of countries to uncover the mechanisms through which reforms are enacted, stabilized, or redirected. For this paper, we focus specifically on the teacher policy dimension, which includes professional standards, appraisal systems, initial teacher training pathways, career structures, and continuous professional development frameworks. In contrast to policy diffusion literature, we look beyond policy adoption to examine the accumulation of regulatory instruments—understood not only as the multiplication of reforms but also as the intensification, layering, and increasing sophistication of policy tools over time. We argue that apparent convergence in first-order policy categories (e.g., the widespread adoption of standards, appraisal systems, or career ladders) can flatten significant heterogeneity in how instruments are designed, combined, and operationalized. To capture these second-order dynamics, our database codes key policy properties—that is, the specific design features that shape how instruments intend to regulate practice (e.g., selectivity in initial teacher training, consequentiality of appraisal, or the extent to which career structures reward merit). Preliminary results show that countries are intensifying regulatory activity around teachers. Yet the varying internalisation of external pressures (such as PISA results or COVID-19), together with different professional traditions, political coalitions, and administrative capacities, shapes which instruments are strengthened, how this occurs, and to what extent.

Akiba, M., & LeTendre, G. K. (2017). Introduction: Conceptualizing teacher quality and policy in a global context. In International handbook of teacher quality and policy (pp. 1-21). Routledge. Dumay, X., Sorensen, T. B., & Paine, L. (Eds.). (2024). World Yearbook of Education 2025: The Teaching Profession in a Globalizing World: Governance, Career, Learning. Taylor & Francis. Mundy, K., Green, A., Lingard, B., & Verger, A. (Eds.). (2016). Handbook of global education policy. John Wiley & Sons.